David Epps's blog

I was homesick for the very first time. Even though I had been at Parris Island, S.C., for several weeks undergoing the rigorous Marine Corps boot camp, now called “basic warrior training,” I had not had the time to think much about home.

Imagine that you are, in the eyes of your superiors, inadequately educated, without the necessary social skills and political graces, in the later years of your life, and you have been given an assignment that falls to you only because the boss’s first choice died unexpectedly.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, of Buenos Aires, has been elected the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Francis. He is the first Latin American pope to lead the church, as well as the first Jesuit priest.

At a meeting of the North American bishops and archbishops of our denomination in Orlando, Fla., recently, Archbishop Craig Bates of New York was sharing how some people say they love Jesus but loathe the Church. He said that he personally loved both Jesus and the Church.

While visiting family in my Tennessee hometown a couple of decades ago, I decided to take my kids to lunch. I was standing in line in a fast food restaurant when I spotted someone in front of me who looked familiar.

Once in a while it dawns on me how much technology has changed things, even in the small things. The other day I was looking at the website for our diocese. Most of the news is generated from my office, although other churches and individuals in Georgia and Tennessee also contribute.

This past week marks the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Row v. Wade. This year also marks the 156th anniversary of what is known by observers of the Supreme Court as the Dred Scott Decision. One decision has to do with abortion rights.

So how did you do last year? When you came to the end of the year, were you better off or were you disappointed? What about those projects you planned to do? That weight you were going to lose? The savings and investing you were planning you were going to do?

I was following several professionally dressed educators into a hotel in a Texas city. It was a bitterly cold December day and we had disembarked from the same shuttle bus and were headed for our rooms.